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The Opel GT is the concept General Motors should build for the US

Now is the time. General Motors should double-down on performance cars and build the Opel GT concept that's set to debut next week at the Geneva Motor Show. Better yet, sell it in the United States as the Chevy GT. Consumers are showing a thirst for performance cars not seen in decades. Ford has them coming in waves, with everything from the F-150 Raptor to a hotted-up Fusion. FCA US is unrepentantly building loads of Hellcats. GM should respond. The General's cupboard is hardly bare. With the Corvette, Camaro, and Cadillac's V-Series, GM has more than enough to compete with its crosstown rivals and anything Europe or Japan can throw at it. But there's also an opportunity. There's not many front-mid-engine, rear-wheel-drive, two-seat sports cars out there like the Opel GT concept. A Chevy GT that used that layout and captured some of the concept car's proportions and curves would ignite a different kind of passion in enthusiasts. It would be Miata-like. With Chevy branding, this sports car would be the everyday exotic. The concept has a turbocharged 1.0-liter three-cylinder engine, which makes about 143 horsepower to motivate a structure that weighs less than 2,200 pounds. It can hit 60 miles per hour in less than eight seconds. All of those numbers are within the front-engined Miata's territory. This new Opel is inspired by two great mid-1960s concepts that helped put its design studio, and that of its sister brand, the British Vauxhall, on the map. (The GT concept is also technically a Vauxhall, as the brands are linked in GM's European strategy.) One of them, the '66 Vauxhall XVR remained a concept. The '65 Opel Experimental GT was on the road by 1968. That shows this is doable. There's precedent. The Saturn Sky and Pontiac Solstice shared a chassis with a modern GT during that trio's brief run. If GM ever makes this concept, Opel and Vauxhall should get their versions. But Chevy is the one that could make this car a global icon. Chevrolet GT. Make it happen. News & Analysis News: The potential return of the Ford Bronco is generating a ton of attention. Analysis: That's not news, per se. But when the Bronco6G.com fan site did a rendering of a next-generation Bronco, it almost broke the Internet. Everyone from Automotive News to Jalopnik picked up the illustrations. Our own post has drawn a lot of traffic and passionate responses. People are clamoring for the Bronco's return.

Junkyard Gem: 1980 Chevrolet LUV Mikado

During the 1970s and into the 1980s, each member of the Detroit Big Three imported Japanese small pickups and sold them with Ford (Mazda Proceed), Dodge/Plymouth (Mitsubishi Forte), or Chevrolet (Isuzu Faster) badges here. Ford developed the Ranger and killed the Courier for 1983 (though Americans could still buy the Mazda-badged version all the way through 1993), while The General axed the LUV after the S-10 debuted in the 1982 model year. Isuzu sold the same truck as the P'up through 1987, though, and we might as well follow up our recent P'up Junkyard Gem with its LUV predecessor. LUV stood for Light Utility Vehicle, and I've managed to spot a handful in the boneyards over the years. This one now resides in a yard in northeastern Colorado. The Mikado trim package included striped seat upholstery and a sporty steering wheel, plus these cool dash badges. As far as I can tell, no LUV Mikado advertising featured any Gilbert and Sullivan tunes. This one is fairly rusty for Front Range Colorado, and it has endured a bed swap from some other small truck. The engine is the 75-horse Isuzu 1.8-liter. Members of this engine family went into everything from Chevy Chevettes to Isuzu Troopers in the United States. Very unusually for a small pickup during the Malaise Era, this one has a luxurious automatic transmission. Acceleration must have been a leisurely affair in this truck. Air conditioning? Unheard of! Someone stuck every one of their lunchtime apple stickers on the driver's door. After 41 years of work, this truck is done. Come on strong in a LUV of your own!

Meet the mother-daughter team that's worked on almost every Chevy Volt

It's Mother's Day, and we're soft enough we love our mothers enough to share a new video from General Motors with you. In it, we meet Monique Watson (left) and Evetta Osbourne, a mother-daughter team that works at the Detroit-Hamtramck Assembly where GM makes the Chevy Volt (along with all of GM's other plug-in hybrids: the Opel Ampera, Holden Volt and Cadillac ELR). The two work side-by-side and have installed the lithium-ion battery pack on almost all of those vehicles - nearly 80,000 of them - since GM started making the pre-production Volts in 2009. In a prepared statement, Watson said that she likes working next to her mom, day in and day out, and they the two are totally in sync when it comes to putting the 400-pound, 16.5-kWh packs into the vehicle undersides. They two can also share stories throughout the day, and Watson said, "The arrangement has absolutely improved our relationship." Osborne started working at Detroit-Hamtramck in 1999, Watson since 2006. If you're driving a Volt today, you probably have them to thank for doing a bit of the work putting your car together. See a short video of them in action below. It's Always Mother's Day for Detroit-Hamtramck Duo Mother, daughter install lithium-ion battery pack in nearly all GM electric vehicles 2014-05-08 DETROIT – For Detroit resident Evetta Osborne, every day is Mother's Day. That's because she literally works side by side with her daughter, Monique Watson, at General Motors' Detroit-Hamtramck assembly plant. They have installed the lithium-ion battery pack on nearly every Chevrolet Volt, Opel Ampera, Holden Volt, and Cadillac ELR since production began. In fact, apart from vacation days and an occasional sick day, the mother-daughter duo has installed almost every battery pack since the Volt was in pre-production in 2009. The ELR launched earlier this year. All told – including Ampera – that's more than 80,000 electric vehicles. "We're a good team and our relationship is secondary when it comes to performing our jobs – but it's great to work alongside my daughter, said Osborne, a mother of five. Because the battery packs weigh more than 400 pounds each, automatic guided vehicles – robotic carts that use sensors to follow a path through the plant – deliver them just as the vehicle body structures glide into position overhead. The carts then lift the T-shaped packs, and Osborne and Watson guide them into the chassis and secure each one with 24 fasteners.